Common-law, same-sex households becoming the norm

Last week, Statistics Canada released a "family portrait" of Canadians using the third set of data from the 2006 Census. This release examines developments in families, marital status, households and living arrangements in Canada between 2001 and 2006.
In addition, it provides information on the number of same-sex couples, both those living in a common-law union and, for the first time, those who are married. In total, the census enumerated 8,896,840 census families in 2006, up 6.3 percent from 2001.
The census enumerated 6,105,910 married-couple families, an increase of only 3.5 percent from 2001. In contrast, the number of common-law-couple families surged 18.9 percent to 1,376,865, while the number of lone-parent families increased 7.8 percent to 1,414,060.
Consequently, married-couple families accounted for 68.6 percent of all census families in 2006, down from 70.5 percent five years earlier. The proportion of common-law-couple families rose from 13.8 to 15.5 percent, while the share of lone-parent families increased slightly from 15.7 to 15.9 percent.
Among lone-parent families, growth between 2001 and 2006 was most rapid for families headed by men. Their number increased 14.6 percent, more than twice the rate of growth of 6.3 percent among those headed by women.
Same-sex married couples were counted for the first time.
The number of same-sex couples surged 32.6 percent between 2001 and 2006, five times the pace of opposite-sex couples (+5.9 percent).
For the first time, the census counted same-sex married couples, reflecting the legalization of same-sex marriages for all of Canada as of July 2005. In total, the census enumerated 45,345 same-sex couples, of which 7,465, or 16.5 percent, were married couples.
Half of all same-sex couples in Canada lived in the three largest census metropolitan areas, Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver, in 2006. Toronto accounted for 21.2 percent of all same-sex couples, Montréal, 18.4 percent and Vancouver, 10.3 percent.
In 2006, same-sex couples represented 0.6 percent of all couples in Canada. This is comparable to data from New Zealand (0.7 percent) and Australia (0.6 percent).
Over half (53.7 percent) of same-sex married spouses were men in 2006, compared with 46.3 percent who were women. Proportions were similar among same-sex common-law partners in both 2006 and 2001.
About 9.0 percent of persons in same-sex couples had children aged 24 years and under living in the home in 2006.
More information is available at www.statcan.ca.